1AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF CRIMINOLOGY WHEN MEN KILL: A COMPARISON OF EVERYDAY HOMICIDE WITH IMAGES OF MEDIA VIOLENCE

2Images of violence and crime are persistent fare on movie and television screens, in fiction, and on the front pages of our newspapers. Murder titillates and excites the public, and those in the media business have learned that this translates into ready profits. The actual facts of crime as represented in such direct sources as victim reports or records from the criminal justice system present a very different portrait of the nature of violence in our contemporary communities. How media vs. real life imageries of crime are different is a major question that will be addressed here, and with that the related issue of whether there ought to be concern about any differences between about the media portrayals of violence and the facts that are revealed by crime statistics. An obvious starting point for this discussion is to consider briefly the everyday reality of crimes such as homicide. Everyday Homicide “Real ” homicide, as revealed in the official records, is an infrequent event. In Australia, in any given year roughly two persons out of every 100,000 will become victims of a homicide, a rate well under such murder prone states as Russia